Chapter 3: Recovering the Arts of Freedom
3.5 Liberal Arts as Distinct from Other Arts
3.5 Liberal Arts as Distinct from Other Arts
So far we have been discussing the liberal arts in fairly generic terms, having only distinguished between the Trivium and Quadrivium. But the decision to explain the liberal arts in this fashion has itself been a determination that highlights a particular historical vision of the liberal arts.
As Christopher Schlect points out, “history offers no stable consensus on the definition of the term liberal arts, nor on which are, actually, the liberal ones.”1 As a matter of fact, both now (in the modern renaissance), as well as historically, there is and have been “a wide array of visions for the liberal arts.”2
Historically, there have been as many as nine, even eleven, arts considered liberal arts—including medicine and architecture—and practically speakings, as few as three (some pay little attention to the Quadrivium or dismiss these as theoretical arts or natural philosophy).3
Finally, the Renaissance humanists were more interested in particular authors and works than they were in subjects considered to be liberal studies, manifesting a pedagogical approach they called studia humanitatis that shifted from Scholastic liberal studies.
Adding to the confusion, in the modern era many educational institutions pass off a variety of courses (e.g., Social Sciences, Women’s Studies, The History of Rock and Roll, Gender Studies, etc.) under the auspices of various kinds of colleges (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Humanities, etc.) as liberal arts.
Therefore, at this point in the conversation, it will be helpful for us highlight the fact that in the modern Classical Christian renaissance we will inevitably encounter various conceptions of the liberal arts, even though most of them will stem from diverse historical precepts. It will further be helpful if we attempt to clarify some terms that are frequently used interchangeably, although imprecisely, so we are able to make some important distinctions between competing visions for the liberal arts.
Art and Craft
Aristotle defines an art as “a reasoned state of a capacity to make.”4 Craft or craftsmanship is the act of making or producing something, whereas art refers to the applied theory of the making, “the idea of a good action.”5 The difference between the artist and the craftsman is not the experience. Both share in this, as well as in the application of memory to their experience in making. But because art involves the application of reason, “artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot,” explains Aristotle.6 This is further why animals cannot be artists, even though they often make amazing structures (e.g., birds nests, beaver dams, etc.).
Art and Science
Sciences, purely understood, because they are abstract, necessary, and unchanging truths, are not art. They can become arts when applied to making or producing, however. Then they usually go by different names, in any case (i.e., engineering, architecture, etc.). Drawing from Cassiodorus, Chris Schlect asserts “rules of art are ‘rules of thumb,’ arisen from human judgments, whereas the rules of science are inflexible.”7 In other words, although there is more than one way to deliver a speech (art of rhetoric), A² + B² = C² every single time.
Three Kinds of Arts
In the classical world, a distinction was made between the liberal arts and what was called the servile arts. Later distinctions were made between these and the fine arts.
The servile or mechanical arts are practical arts—carpentry, farming, metallurgy—valuable and necessary for sustaining life. The fine arts are those arts whose value is inherent, namely beauty. They are fine or “a finished good” in themselves, not for what they can produce or accomplish for something else. Paintings, music, and sculptures are considered fine arts.8 Where servile arts are for the production of something practical and fine arts are for the production of beauty, the liberal arts can be understood as the production of knowledge.
As Christianity’s Incarnational view of life and work which rejected dualisms that disparaged the material world and embraced the goodness of all vocations whose aims were toward human flourishing captured the Western imagination, the classical distinctions between servile and liberal arts was refined.
Instead of the liberal arts being seen as freeing a person from the vulgar pursuits of work, merely sustaining life on wage labor, they were seen as metaphysical or intellectual pursuits that liberated a person from his ignorance and provincialism, as well as his dependence on teachers.9
In our modern context, there is a sense in which the servile arts (i.e., trades ad professions) have become dominant, and education has become largely vocational in its function and aims. Recovering the liberal arts means recovering an education aimed toward a higher purpose: the cultivation of knowledge and the internal capacities of the soul.
Where the servile arts train the hands for labor, and the fine arts produce beautiful artifacts, the liberal arts train the mind and heart to contemplate the perennial human questions, formulate sound judgments, and prepare the soul to act in accordance with virtue.
Next up:
3.6 Perennial Benefits of the Liberal Arts
3.7 A Field of Knowledge and a Pedagogy for its Acquisition
Conclusion: The Call to Reclaim the Liberal Arts
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Christopher Schlect, “What Is a Liberal Art?,” Principia: A Journal of Classical Education 1, no. 1 (2022): 75–91, https://doi.org/10.5840/principia20229224, 77.
Schlect, “What is a Liberal Art,” 77.
Expand this note to discuss the various historical methods for determining which arts are liberal.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1140a, (Revised Oxford Translation: Barnes, ed.), 1799.
William Ames in Schlect., 80.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b, (Revised Oxford Translation: Barnes, ed.), 1553.
Schlect, “What is a Liberal Art,” 82.
An expanded note will explain how music can be both a liberal and a fine art.
An expanded note will explain how a liberally educated person is not radically independent, exclusive of all teaching and teachers; rather, he is the master of his educational progress. “The whole world of teachers is now opened up to him,” says Schlect.